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Next Level Networks’ Pilot Community Fiber in Los Altos Hills Experiences Growing Service Demands

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3 years ago

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Scott Vanderlip and Next Level Networks CEO Darrell Gentry walking in Los Altos Hills

August 30, 2020 — In a neighborhood outside of Silicon Valley, amongst what native Scott Vanderlip described as “a community full of tech geeks,” residents struggled to access reliable, affordable internet, despite being able to see the headquarter buildings of some of the largest tech companies from their homes.

According to Vanderlip, chair of Los Altos Hills Community Fiber, incumbent internet providers stopped extending infrastructure to the area around 15 years ago.

“AT&T U-Verse was doing well extending fiber in the area,” Vanderlip recalled during an interview with Broadband Breakfast, “before they suddenly stopped building and began charging outrageous prices to extend service.”

As a result, Los Altos Hills, California, was riddled with pockets of extreme desperation for internet access, forcing some residents to turn to satellite providers for service.

Frustrated with the lack of alternatives available to the town, Vanderlip and other residents banded together to form Los Altos Hills Community Fiber, a network of homeowners that literally owns its own fiber-optic broadband.

The company providing the know-how and coordination for this experiment in high-capacity broadband is Next Level Networks, a Sunnyvale-based company with a visionary approach to changing fiber-optic build-outs.

Next Level Networks sees Los Altos Hills Community Fiber as a test case for its unique open access financing model of ultra-high speed, community-owned internet infrastructure.

And it is there, an area overlooking but apart from Silicon Valley, that the co-venturers are attempting to fill the gaps in broadband left by monopoly-style providers like AT&T and Comcast.

Next Level Networks’ open access model

Next Level Networks’ CEO Darrell Gentry is the brain behind the open access model utilized by Community Fiber.

Unlike a corporation where one company owns the infrastructure, operates the network, and offers internet services, open access models split this conventionally vertically-integrated service model apart.

“We adapted the co-operative approach to fiber broadband,” Gentry told Broadband Breakfast.

The Community Fiber network is owned and financed by LAHCF, an entity representing its subscribers or end users, and managed by a professional operator, Next Level Networks.

Next Level Networks was selected by LACHF to head the design, configuration, installation and maintenance of its community-owned and operated fiber optic network.

“The community owns the last mile infrastructure, members own drops to their homes, and the company provides the “middle mile” fiber backhaul,” detailed Gentry.

“We leave it to the communities to build,” he said, specifying that they expect communities to take the lead on acquiring customers, which leads to an ownership mentality.

By utilizing an open access model, LACHF has secured more control over their community’s connectivity future. And for Next Level Networks, the model ensures that projects are cash flow positive on day one.

The “barn-raising” installation of Los Altos Hills Community Fiber

A unique crowdsourcing methodology aims to drive further growth

Gentry created crowdsourcing technology to gauge interest in services in order to better understand where his service model would be feasibly implemented.

Utilizing this technology, residents are able to help drive local participation by plugging in their address in Next Level Network’s crowdsourcing web site. This then can encourage their neighbors to join.

The more users that local internet champions can get to subscribe to LAHCF, the less monthly service costs.

“We divide the cost by the users and that’s how much we charge,” Vanderlip explained. “The more users, the less expensive.”

Subscribers must pay a one-time fee for infrastructure installation, which typically ranges from $3,000 to $10,000, to connect neighborhoods to the network and extend fiber from the backbone to the home.

As the costs of many internet providers continue to climb, the cost of LAHCF will instead fall as interest grows and participation increases.

The LAH Community Fiber network currently offers 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) upload and download speeds, but it’s built to offer 10 Gpbs, which will become available as the cost of the requisite equipment decreases, according to Vanderlip.

10 Gigabits per second symmetrical connections!

Los Altos Hill’s netizens won’t have to wait for an operator to decide they have the budget to provide more bandwidth for LAHCF subscribers: The community will decide together.

Demand has increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic

Service to the network went live in April of 2019, and just over a year in, community demand for the internet service is skyrocketing.

Vanderlip said that community interest in LAHCF has been exponential since the town’s working and schooling operations were shifted to the home by the coronavirus pandemic

Over 12 neighborhood projects have recently been launched by neighborhood champions all over Los Altos Hills.

As residents’ bandwidth demands have increased throughout the town, infrastructure put in place by incumbent providers has simply not been unable to keep up.

The increase of video teleconferencing, for example, has meant that “people’s internet has just stopped working,” Vanderlip said.

The Los Altos Hill Community Fiber solution offers manna for residents grappling with sluggish connections.

In an effort to gauge interest in the service, Community Fiber recently launched a survey to better understand local residents’ internet gripes.

Of the 46 responses received, 96 percent said that internet is either super or very important to them.

When asked whether they would be interested in joining the community fiber network, 75 percent indicated they were, while 27.5 percent expressed willingness to become “champions” to inform their neighbors of the possibility.

In an effort to quickly deploy service to neighborhoods with increasing interest, LAHCF is in the process of planning to deploy multi-Gbps radio links which can beam internet service in order to shorten the time of deployment to those in need while neighborhood interest continues to build.

A map of Los Altos Hills Community Fiber project areas

Incumbent providers have key weaknesses

Even though the federal government has put billions into bringing broadband to rural communities, there is still no broadband in many areas, Vanderlip said.

As an example that spurred his outrage at incumbent providers, Vanderlip personally asked a colleague working for the California Public Utilities Commission to look up different California addresses, including extremely rural addresses that he knew had limited service options, to see if federal monies were available.

If no money was available, it meant the monies had been spent with no viable options delivered.

For example, in Bumblebee, California, in the Stanislaus National Forest, Vanderlip sought information about a grant from the Connect America Fund Phase II Auction. But the area was ineligible as AT&T was awarded the money in a nearby city.

“They took the money four years ago and have not done anything with it,” said Vanderlip, saying the town still has zero broadband options, with some still using dial up internet. “They took $15 million and it’s just not there,” he complained. “It’s amazing what these companies are getting away with.”

Scott Vanderlip talking about Los Altos Hills Community Fiber over videoconference

Back in Los Altos Hills, the main incumbent is cable provider Comcast, which he said provides slows speeds during peak usage with wildly outdated technology.

“We should not be wasting any more money in metal-based technology-to-the-home,” Vanderlip said, criticizing incumbents who continue to install outdated coaxial cables.

Vanderlip personally got inspired about community-owned fiber after Comcast quoted him $17,000 to extend its service the distance of three telephone poles to his house.

“I thought that was outrageous,” Vanderlip said. “Comcast can charge whatever they want for these installs,” even though they are supposed to maintain a standard rate.

“This isn’t even that expensive,” said Vanderlip. The government “could bring fiber to the country for a small fraction of what they’re spending on other projects.”

Can the community fiber model work more broadly?

The case of Los Altos Hills Community Fiber may prove that, in the words of Gentry, “a community with a sufficient amount of interest can take its destiny into their own hands.”

“If I have the option to invest in my own community, I want to invest,” added Vanderlip, saying that the investment needed to bring about widespread economic prosperity in America is to bring fiber internet to everyone in the country. Next Level Networks’ open access model facilitates community champions doing just that.

Vanderlip directly acknowledged that “Los Altos Hills has the benefit of being a very affluent community.” And this leads to a critical question: Can the model be replicated in a less affluent areas?

Many communities do not have the financial mobility to get such a capital-intensive project, like this, off the ground, he said. But that is where Next Level Networks’ financing model may come into the picture.

Someone has to play the catalyst role within the community, as Vanderlip has done in Los Altos Hills. But with many eager to invest in their communities now, Next Level Networks aims to generate many more success stories in the future.

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Reporter Jericho Casper graduated from the University of Virginia studying media policy. She grew up in Newport News in an area heavily impacted by the digital divide and has a passion for universal access and a vendetta against anyone who stands in the way of her getting better broadband.

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12 Days of Broadband

12 Days: In 2023, a Rising Tide of Open Access Networks

Open access networks can be better understand through the 7-layered Open Systems Interconnection model.

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3 weeks ago

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December 28, 2023

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Illustration by DALL-E

December 28, 2023 – Open access networks in 2023 saw signs of change as major telecom players, including AT&T and T-Mobile, dipped their toes in the market – and smaller competitive and municipal players also continued strong.

The collaboration known as the Gigapower joint venture, forged between AT&T and private equity investment giant BlackRock in May, lent new legitimacy to the open access approach, which separates the provision of broadband services from the network operator.

Another major operator venturing into the space is T-Mobile, which is set to become the primary tenant in a recently established $500 million partnership between Tillman FiberCo and private equity firm Northleaf Capital Partners.

The joint venture will allow T-Mobile to offer fiber Internet services to customers in markets across Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Texas, all without investing a dime in the infrastructure.

In an industry long characterized by a preference for vertically-integrated ownership and control, incumbent providers are pivoting towards a model that emphasizes sharing networks.

What are open access network?

In an open access network, broadband infrastructure is owned by one entity, which can be either a public or a private entity and is often operated by a separate network operator. The network operator leases or shares the infrastructure with multiple retail internet service providers.

One can think of an open access network as a real-world implementation of the 7-layered Open Systems Interconnection model by the International Organization for Standardization. The OSI model is a broader construct for understanding the physical layer, data link layer, network layer, etc., in internet networking.

However, understanding the basics of the “layer cake” approach helps conceptualize the unique business and technical dimensions behind open access networks.

In an important contribution to this discussion, Broadband Breakfast’s Digital Infrastructure Investment Summit on December 5 demonstrated exactly how many forms open access networks can take. After a keynote presentation on the “Past and Future of Open Access Networks” by COS Systems Mikael Philipsson, a panel delved into diverse perspectives on such networks in the U.S.

The panel emphasized the differences and variations in several last-mile broadband deployments, including those of SiFi Networks, UTOPIA Fiber, Google Fiber, municipalities like the Eastern Shore of Virginia Broadband Authority and what panelists called the “utility lease model.”

In other sessions at the summit, panelists voice the belief that shared infrastructure is poised to become more common in broadband networks.

Regarding the AT&T-BlackRock joint venture of Gigapower, AT&T President of Broadband and Connectivity Initiatives Erin Scarborough highlighted scalability as a pivotal factor guiding AT&T’s choices, speaking at a Broadband Breakfast Live Online event in September.

Although Scarborough emphasized AT&T’s preference for the ownership model, she noted the agreement will allow the company to expand outside its traditional footprint.

“The model used by the joint venture will make sense to other ISPs, gain a lot of traction, and help break down historical biases telecos have had about not controlling all the assets,” predicted Gigapower CEO Bill Hogg during the event.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert has also publicly acknowledged potential network capacity limitations for the company’s fixed wireless access service. At a conference in San Francisco in September, he said the open access model offers a “capital-light way to enter [the fiber] business and take advantage of [T-Mobile’s] embedded customer base and fantastic brand.”

Traditionally pioneered by municipalities

The large telecos appear to be displaying a newfound openness in their approaches to achieving growth. However, the open access model has historically been pioneered by  municipalities, city-owned utilities, and cooperatives in the U.S.

Founded by a consortium of 11 Utah cities in 2004, UTOPIA Fiber expanded its fiber footprint across five cities in Utah this year. UTOPIA now offers its 10 Gigabit services to residents in 19 cities spanning four states. The government organization completely funds the open access builds and network operations through subscriber revenue.

The acceptance of open access might gain new traction through the Washington state legislature. This year, a bill would require all state funding from the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, nearly $1 billion, to be used to build open-access networks in the state. The bill did not pass in 2023, but 14 of Washington’s 28 Public Utility Districts are committed to deploying citywide open access networks to improve access to telecommunications services. Initiatives like the one to build countywide dark fiber led by the Lewis County PUD are happening across the state.

In Vermont, 22 communities partnered with Great Works Vermont Internet to build open access fiber that is expected to serve 30,000 locations.

A number of city’s collaborated with SiFi Networks this year to announce citywide open access fiber builds. The company set an ambitious goal to pass 40,000 homes per month in early 2023.

For example, the network in Placenta, California will see 20,000 homes, businesses and institutions served by open access, alongside 70,000 households in Oceanside, California. The company announced agreements to partner with Cleveland, Ohio, Saratoga Springs, New York, and Sugarland, Texas this year.

How will the momentum behind open access networks – from telco giants to scrappy innovators to persistent municipalities – play out in 2024?

See “The Twelve Days of Broadband” on Broadband Breakfast

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Open Access

Former Utah House Speaker Spearheads Campaign Against UTOPIA Fiber

The rapidly expanding open access network has historically faced consistent opposition from anti-muni groups.

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4 weeks ago

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December 20, 2023

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Photo of UTOPIA Fiber breaking ground on fiber network in Syracuse City, Utah.

December 20, 2023 – Utah locals may come across new television advertisements targeting UTOPIA Fiber, as part of a $1 million effort backed by the Domestic Policy Caucus. 

Run under the name NoGovInternet.com, the thrust of this campaign hinges on the argument that the government should steer clear of having a role in providing internet access.

Its primary target is UTOPIA Fiber, a coalition of municipalities with a hand in serving 60,000 broadband customers across 20 cities in Utah.

Fronting the campaign is Utah’s former House Speaker Greg Hughes, a Republican from the fast-growing city of Draper along the Wasatch Front.

During a FOX 13 News interview in December, Hughes raised concerns about government bodies regulating internet speed and pricing.

On its end, UTOPIA denounces what it considers “misinformation” driving the campaign and dismisses Hughes’ assertion suggesting the entity’s ability to control internet speed or access.

According to UTOPIA’s chief marketing officer Kim McKinley, the coalition of localities comprising UTOPIA Fiber lack control over either aspect.

“We don’t make any of those choices. The privately owned service providers are the ones who make those choices,” McKinley told KSL in an interview. 

Fifteen private internet service providers utilizing UTOPIA’s open access network are responsible for establishing price points and providing various speed packages. Proponents say this system allows for market-driven competition and consumer choice, ensuring a diverse range of options for users across the network.

Hughes also highlighted concerns about potential financial risks for cities partnering with UTOPIA. The campaign references hurdles encountered during UTOPIA’s launch 15 years ago.

“Some of UTOPIA’s early initiatives proved problematic, requiring some cities to step in to help cover bond payments,” said McKinley. 

“Since 2009, though, after implementing new operating procedures, network demand has always been sufficient to cover bond costs.”

As the largest, and fastest-growing open access network in the United States, UTOPIA has long been the target of groups opposed to public broadband initiatives.

In May, Bountiful, Utah voted unanimously (5-0) to collaborate with UTOPIA to extend fiber broadband to all residents after a years-long process. This initiative was met by a cable-funded group launching a petition opposing the city’s efforts. The opposition campaign ultimately failed as hired signature collectors couldn’t gather sufficient support from registered voters.

“We are being used as this example across the country for how to successfully do municipal fiber,” UTOPIA’s CEO Roger Timmerman told Fox 13. 

“The private company’s don’t like that much, so we are seeing these attacks trying to scare cities from doing that same thing, saying ‘There’s a lot of risk, there’s a lot of cost.’” 

The American Association for Public Broadband, a proponent of public broadband, issued a statement in response to the ads, labeling them as “dark money attacks” and attributing them to “big cable.”

Hughes affirms that there are currently no ongoing legislative endeavors tied to the Domestic Policy Caucus campaign. Furthermore, there is no active attempt to dismantle the current agreements between UTOPIA and its partner cities, he said.

He asserts that the responsibility for broadband and fiber development should remain with private companies. He’s vigorously advocating to spread this message.

Republicans have historically held opposition to municipal broadband initiatives, like that of UTOPIA Fiber, and proposed laws at times that aim to restrict or impose limits on municipal broadband initiatives citing arguments emphasizing free market principles, suggesting that government involvement in broadband provision might hinder competition or private investment. 

However, opponents argue that such laws limit consumer choice and prevent communities from obtaining high-speed internet access that might not be available or affordable from private providers.

At its peak, around 19 states in the U.S. had laws that effectively banned or restricted municipal broadband networks to varying degrees.

Though there are currently no attempts to dismantle UTOPIA, legislation has targeted the organization before.

Notably in 2014, a bill introduced by State Rep. Curt Webb, R-Utah, H.B. 60 was aimed at dismantling UTOPIA, reports Community Networks. 

As the bill was then written, it wouldn’t have just prevented UTOPIA from building to people willing to pay for it. It also would have required the shut down of any existing services and prohibited UTOPIA from maintaining their backbone that links cities together.

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Open Access

Panelists Debate Whether Lease-Utility Model Offers Open Access Benefits

At the Digital Infrastructure Investment Summit, five experts debate the essence of ‘open access networks’.

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1 month ago

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December 8, 2023

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Photo at Digital Infrastructure Investment Summit in Washington on December 5, 2023.

WASHINGTON, December 8, 2023 — The term “open access networks” encompasses a wide range of interactions between internet customers, providers and network operators – and no single definition may be sufficient.

The open access session at the Digital Infrastructure Investment Summit Tuesday delved into diverse perspectives on such networks in the U.S., and emphasized differences and variations in several last-mile broadband deployments.

For example, SiFi Networks President Scott Bradshaw emphasized the importance of citywide infrastructure deployment with more than one internet service provider. In the 40 U.S. cities in 11 states in which SiFi operates, SiFi is the network operator, with a least a few ISPs offering services to consumers.

SiFi uses private financing to build, own and operate the network infrastructure – unlike several other models discussed on the panel.

For example, one alternative approach discussed was the utility-lease model, pioneered in Huntsville, Alabama, in a collaboration facilitated by the Broadband Group and the city’s Huntsville Utilities and Google Fiber.

On the panel, Broadband Group President Jeff Reiman touted the benefits of this public-private partnership, while also acknowledging that it was not truly or fully open access.

Under the Huntsville arrangement, the city utility had deployed fiber for smart grid purposes and chose to lease excess capacity to Google Fiber to improve local connectivity. Huntsville Utilities built a dark fiber network to pass everyone. But the city did not put in the drops, or the home-by-home connections.

Huntsville Utilities owns the system’s fiber backbone, but Google Fiber owns the line-to-home connections, manages all hookups and delivers internet services.

Is that open access?

SiFi’s Bradshaw took issue with that Huntsville model. He highlighted the critical juncture in which an ISP installs its electronics to the home. He said that that was the exact moment that the network could no longer considered open access.

Allowing service providers – in this case, Google Fiber – to install electronics hands control back to the ISP, and jeopardizes customer choice if that ISP exited the market. A truly open access network would ensure that no one ISP can control the customer base, said Bradshaw.

But in defending the utility-lease model, Reiman argued that it has proven to bring some of the benefits of open access: Competition and improved service options.

In fact, all Huntsville residents saw that as a result of the utility-lease arrangement, “When Google Fiber entered Huntsville, Comcast and AT&T immediately upgraded all of their infrastructure.”

Springfield’s City Utilities, in Missouri, followed a similar framework. There, the city leased its unlit fiber network on a nonexclusive basis to internet service provider Lumen Technologies, previously CenturyLink.

Weighing in on the exchange, moderator Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said: “There’s a fair number of people who would say we still get some of the benefits of open access, and perhaps the ones that a community values the most, even if they give control of the electronics away.”

“I am a proponent of critical infrastructure being publicly accountable,” continued Mitchell. “But I can’t deny if I talk to Huntsville Utilities and they are happy with what they’ve done.”

Still other variations on open access

The panel agreed that open access, in its pure or three-tier form, describes a network in which a public or private entity builds and/or owns a broadband network complete with fiber drops; a network operator manages connectivity on a lit network; and multiple service providers sell services to individual customers or businesses.

The term ”wholesale broadband” is broader one. It refers to a high-capacity internet provider reselling services on its network through other, more limited retail customers.

Mikael Philipsson, CEO of COS Systems and the keynoter at the Summit,  recounted his experience in Sweden in which gigabit symmetrical connectivity is now available to 98 percent of citizens, and about 60 percent of customers are purchasing their broadband on open access networks.

In his view, open access is centered on providing a range of services to customers, allowing them to switch providers and services as needed.

Robert Bridgham, executive director of the Eastern Shore of Virginia Broadband Authority, exemplified the hybrid nature of the authority’s approach. It offers backbone service while also serving as an ISP.

“We are allowing proprietors to use our backbone, but we also provide end-user services. So we are effectively an ISP and an open access provider. Is it wholesale, is it open access? We don’t limit ourselves,” he said.

“You can see with my fellow panelists, we all have a little bit of a different variance,” said Bridgham, who said he found it fascinating that four experts could offer such distinct interpretations.

But as a whole, all panelists agreed that utility-lease, wholesale, and open access networks (whether constrained or completely open) all inject much-needed competition into a traditionally vertically-integrated model.

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